Restaurants winning over the grocery stores

During the 12 months prior to pandemic restaurants took a slightly bigger share of food spend in the US compared to the grocery stores. The pandemic upended that development as the restaurant share dropped all the way to 30% of food spend.

For the last 12 months restaurants have again dominated the food spend in the US. Grocery stores managed to be bigger only during the three months around Christmas.

In April restaurants were responsible of 53,2% of all food spend (the biggest number in history).

The chart above illustrates how the pandemic influenced the grocery stores and the restaurants very differently. After a difficult year 2020, restaurants rebounded during 2021. The start for 2022 has been very strong for the restaurants. This is not entirely away from the grocery stores, which have also been able to grow on top of the strong years 2020 and 2021.

Online still a minor challenger

Online grocery was one of the biggest stories of the pandemic. After the rapid jump in revenue, online grocery has stabilised around 3% of all groceries. The market will probably start growing from this higher ground.